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Ah, that makes more sense that a vintage EQ emulation isn’t completely eliminating frequencies below your Hi Pass frequency. Vintage EQ’s are full of mysterious idiosyncrasies – which is what makes them so fun! – and you often don’t know exactly what’s going on without looking at a spectrograph on the output.
I’m always looking at my VU meters and frequency spectrograph for useful information, much of which is easier to see than hear, such as a 23Hz rumble on a guitar amp that you can’t hear but is very much taking up valuable headroom in the mix … stuff like that.
These days there are GOBS of plug-in meters and spectrographs for your DAW master fader to keep an eye on things. For me though, rather than take up valuable screen real estate for a plugin, I use a wonderful hardware metering tool by TC Electronic called the Clarity M. It’s still a plugin you put on your master insert (making sure it’s the final insert in your chain*) but with dedicated hardware displaying a wealth of information at all times. I LOVE it and honestly I learn so much about my mixes and other people’s mixes I dig by constantly having that info available – spectrograph, LUFS, mono deviation, phase correlation, etc etc etc.
So … all that to say …. when I pop an EQ on any insert in my session (even a vintage emulation EQ with no spectrograph overlay) I can solo that track and look at my Clarity M and see exactly what’s going on under the hood, so to speak.